In education news now and 2017, Jefferson County Public Schools began recruiting teachers from Puerto Rico to fill vacant positions, But that stopped due to COVID.

But this month, JCP staff traveled back to the Caribbean island to find more educators willing to work in Kentucky's largest district.

U.S. Puerto Rico offered us the great opportunity to have teachers that have the experience and have the passion to help our kids.

I was hired by CPS July 2017.

I went to an interview and out of all the states, Kentucky was not on my radar for coming in, but it was a great opportunity.

I've been teaching seven years when I moved.

I taught kindergarten for two years here and then an indifferent school with Lee Elementary.

The rest of my experience has been here at Goldsmith, my third grade, because we had the Spanish immersion program and I was teaching two classes in Spanish, two classes in English, and now I came back to kindergarten.

We don't go there just because we need teachers.

We go there because they bring a unique skill that is the language.

And since we are a very diverse district, we need people who will understand those type of obstacles.

The challenges that you have sometimes with the language.

We have a lot of parents that come to the country and they don't know how to speak English.

The fact that I can speak in Spanish with them, that I can send communication in Spanish with them, it is it is really good.

We need to have diversity and we need to have teachers from different countries, different backgrounds, so they can help students feel confident.

So we welcome everybody.

There is a place and system that is going to support you to be successful.

If my teacher is successful, my kids are going to be successful.

There are great teachers in Puerto Rico, great, awesome teachers, and they can bring that experience here and teach our kids.

They will feel good about it.

They have the passion, as my Kentucky teachers have the passion.

They have the desire to change the world.

You don't go into teaching because you want to become rich or you want to leave nicely.

You become a teacher because you have it here.

You have that goal, that vision, that everything you have in your heart, you want to help.

You want to be an agent of change.

I am blessed to have the opportunity to be here.

The fact that I have learned so much working with JCP is it's something that I wouldn't change.

It was the best decision I made for me and my family.

There are currently more than 300 open teaching positions in the school district.